Will asylum seeker ‘bribes’ plan pay off for Mahmood?

Getting MPs to endorse her immigration reforms might be the easy part for the home secretary

- Sean O'Grady

Shabana Mahmood is one of the few prominent members of the Labour Party in the headlines for what she would consider to be the right reasons.

Nonetheless, her new policies on irregular migration are controversial, and her latest proposal is perhaps the one that will provoke the most argument: she is now suggesting it could make sense to pay irregular migrants and particularly foreign criminals much more than the current rate of up to £3,000 for them to leave the country voluntarily...

What's the idea?

It's a foreign import itself - Danish, in fact - much like the rest of her new crackdown on so-called illegal migration. In contrast to Britain, Denmark gives migrants more than £20,000 to return whence they came.

Mahmood argues that it costs UK taxpayers about £30,000 a year to house and feed an asylum seeker, and so increasing the incentive for them to leave would save public money. Similar logic applies to foreign criminals, who number about 10,000 or 12 per cent of the total prison population in the UK.

Why can't we just deport them without paying out bribes?